We have changed the way the search dialog works on the Middlebury website. Previously, if you searched for a term within a certain sub-set of GO shortcodes (ex. “coursehub”) we would forward you directly to the page for that GO term and show a green frameset bar at the top of your screen saying, “We think this is the right page for your search…”. This behavior caused several problems.

In order to get this to work for results on non-www.middlebury.edu websites, like Banner and the Course Hub, we have to use HTML framesets, which are a way to display two webpages at the same time in a single browser window. The green bar was one page and your search result was the other page. For security reasons, browsers don’t let one page talk to another.

If you kept browsing in your search result there wasn’t any way for us to automatically tell the green bar to go away, you had to manually close it. If you manually closed it after you’d left the main result page, you’d be redirected back to it without warning. Also, some dynamic features of sites, like Moodle’s editor, were breaking when displayed inside a frameset. This feature was a good idea when introduced in our website redesign five years ago, but was starting to show some strain.

Now, when you start typing in the search box you will see a list of possible GO shortcuts. Select one of those from the drop-down menu and you’ll go right to that page with no kludgy green bar. Or, if you prefer, press return or select the “Search for…” option, which will always be displayed first in the list, to go to a Google-powered search results page.

New Documentation

Google Analytics: details how to set up a custom segment to look at analytics for your department or office site and provides links to resources on using more advanced features of the Google Analytics platform.

Drupal Redirector: there are no new features of this content type, but it hadn’t been documented previously.

Updates

Tweaks and Fixes

The “Clicking on this image shows it full-size” checkbox in the dialog box you use to embed images in Drupal content is now working again. This will wrap the image in a link that opens a pop-out dialog window that displays the image at its full size, or scaled down so that it fits inside the browser window. See our Drupal File Upload documentation for more information on embedding images in content.

Animated gif images will now work when uploaded to Drupal, however, you must choose “Full content” when embedding them in content. If you allow Drupal to resize the image the processing that occurs will break the animation.

The “Meta tags” tab now appears correctly in the Drupal Page Settings form, so you can set meta tags and Open Graph tags at the page level. See our Drupal Meta Tags documentation for more information on using this feature.

The “Content Sidebar” region on the MIIS site now has 12px of padding on all sides and its content width has been reduced from 212px to 200px. This is to ensure that text doesn’t run up against the right side of the page.

The “Library Portal” content type has been deleted. This was used for a single piece of content, the “Library Quick Search” feature on the Library site, which is now in a Basic Content node.

]]>http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2015/03/30/weekly-web-updates-march-30-2015/feed/0Weekly Web Updates – March 23, 2015http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2015/03/23/weekly-web-updates-march-23-2015/
http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2015/03/23/weekly-web-updates-march-23-2015/#commentsMon, 23 Mar 2015 17:00:11 +0000http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/?p=35109We’re starting this feature again to let you know about the changes that we’ve made recently to our web systems. This will appear each Monday in the Library & Information Technology Services blog.

New Features

Drupal Instagram: You can now add lists of images from one or more Instagram users to your pages. This works well as a sidebar widget.

Updates

Drupal Webform 7.x-4.5 (from 7.x-3.23): We’re now using the newest release of the Webform module which includes better support for conditional rules, including the option of multiple condition checks to display a field. You can also require a “Preview Submission” page to be shown before the user submits the form. Note that if you have a form with conditional rules and your conditions skip the last page in the form the preview page will always be shown. This upgrade also resolves any issues with file upload on multi-page forms and issues with the conditional email feature when copying forms.

Tweaks and Fixes

Images in the Drupal File Upload content are now wrapped in a link to the full-sized image. Note that the “Clicking on this image shows it full-size” checkbox when embedding an image is still not working.

The comment form on Drupal News items on the Middlebury site now includes a comment policy and the unnecessary Subject field has been removed to improve the display of comments.

Drupal Promotional Calendars on pages with empty sidebars now take up the full width of the content region, rather than being confined to 450px.

The Middlebury 404 page is no longer showing extraneous navigation elements and has the correct margins on the text that is shown.

Related videos are no longer shown for any YouTube embeds in Drupal.

The Google Analytics code on the Middlebury Drupal site has been updated to allow links to “securelb.imodules.com” (the online giving form) to track as though they were hosted on our domain.

Google Analytics on the MIIS forms site will now track clicks on form page buttons as discrete events, showing “Page 1 of 3″, for example, when a user clicks on the first page button on a multi-page form.

]]>http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2015/03/23/weekly-web-updates-march-23-2015/feed/0Instagram Integration for Drupalhttp://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2015/03/16/instagram-integration-for-drupal/
http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2015/03/16/instagram-integration-for-drupal/#commentsMon, 16 Mar 2015 15:08:26 +0000http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/?p=35070You can now create a piece of content on your Drupal site(s) to display a list of images from one or multiple Instagram accounts. You can set the number of images to show and the width at which the images will appear. Full documentation on this feature is available on the Library & ITS Wiki.

If you want to use Instagram on your WordPress sites, you can activate the Simple Instagram plugin, then configure the plugin (start with the “Registering and Activating” header on that page).

I’ll be hosting a workshop to discuss how you can use Google Analytics to get information about and improve the Middlebury website. You can sign up for the workshop on Wednesday March 25 from 1:30-2:50pm in MBH 161. Registration is limited to 10 persons to ensure there will be adequate time to answer your individual questions.

If you want to attend either session and don’t already have access to Google Analytics, please submit a Helpdesk ticket for “Software & Web Tools – Goolge Analytics Question” so that I can make sure you’re set up prior to the session.

Description: We can give you access to our Google Analytics reports so that you can look at traffic patterns for your website, but in order to get the most from this tool, you’ll need to do a bit of set up work and understand the basics of the platform. If you do not yet have a Google Analytics account, please indicate this in your sign-up.

What we’ll cover: Google Analytics tips & tricks, what number you should care about, search engine optimization, and getting your account set up.

What we won’t cover: Goals, conversions, AdWords, and on page events.

Format: The workshop will last an hour with additional time for questions and discussion, as needed.

The upgrade will take approximately one hour during which the site will not be usable.

There will also be a short period of under one minute during the upgrade when file assets on the other Drupal 7 sites may not be available. These sites include:

Davis Fellows for Peace: http://www.davisfellowsforpeace.org

Davis Projects for Peace: http://www.davisprojectsforpeace.org

Davis United World Scholars Program: http://davisuwcscholars.org

Middlebury Museum of Art: http://museum.middlebury.edu

Secure Forms for Middlebury: https://forms.middlebury.edu

Secure Forms for MIIS: https://forms.miis.edu

We do not anticipate any impact on other services.

]]>http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2014/09/05/sunday-morning-maintenance-september-7-2014/feed/1Sunday morning maintenance May 18, 2014http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2014/05/13/sunday-morning-maintenance-may-18-2014/
http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2014/05/13/sunday-morning-maintenance-may-18-2014/#commentsTue, 13 May 2014 19:58:36 +0000http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/?p=33932This Sunday morning between 8 and 10 am we will be upgrading three of our sites from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7. The three sites are:

Davis Projects for Peace: http://www.davisprojectsforpeace.org

Davis United World Scholars: http://www.davisuwcscholars.org

Middlebury College Museum of Art: http://museum.middlebury.edu

Each of these sites will experience a period of 10-20 minutes during which it will not be usable.

There will also be a short period of under one minute during each upgrade when file assets on the other Drupal 7 sites may not be available. These sites include:

I’ll be hosting a workshop to discuss how you can use Google Analytics to get information about and improve the Middlebury website. You can sign up for the workshop on Monday March 3 from 1:30-2:50pm in LIB 105. Registration is limited to 10 persons to ensure there will be adequate time to answer your individual questions.

If you want to attend either session and don’t already have access to Google Analytics, please submit a Helpdesk ticket for “Other Software Issue” so that I can make sure you’re set up prior to the session.

Description: We can give you access to our Google Analytics reports so that you can look at traffic patterns for your website, but in order to get the most from this tool, you’ll need to do a bit of set up work and understand the basics of the platform. If you do not yet have a Google Analytics account, please indicate this in your sign-up.

What we’ll cover: Google Analytics tips & tricks, what number you should care about, search engine optimization, and getting your account set up.

What we won’t cover: Goals, conversions, AdWords, and on page events. If you need help with these, please send a note to helpdesk@middlebury.edu and ask for a one-on-one meeting to discuss Google Analytics.

Format: The workshop will last an hour with additional time for questions and discussion, as needed.

]]>http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2014/02/10/google-analytics-for-higher-education-workshop-on-march-3-2014/feed/0Friday Links – January 24, 2014http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2014/01/24/friday-links-january-24-2014/
http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2014/01/24/friday-links-january-24-2014/#commentsFri, 24 Jan 2014 14:00:46 +0000http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/?p=33298With a tagline like this: “A spectacular historical atlas refashioned for the 21st century” who can resist? Check out the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States presented by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond to view a digital version of Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright’s atlas that was originally published in 1932.

Exciting! Students and staff at University College London serendipitously discovered a type 1a supernova in M82 on January 22. Read about it here!

Supernova in M82, before and after, by E. Guido, N. Howes, M. Nicolini, January 2014.

Pew Internet & American Life Project reports on escalating use of e-books. “The proportion of Americans who read e-books is growing, but few have completely replaced print books for electronic versions.”

Adobe Adds 3D Printing Tools to Photoshop – Before 3D printers crank out objects, a user needs digital model — either one they create or download from the Internet. Once you’ve got one, though, you’ll need software that supports 3D imagery if you want to edit it. As of today, Photoshop users can design, edit and customize those 3D models similar to how you might adjust a 2D picture within the app.